GGO, Moose, Wild Horses, Crossbills (20140105) A recovery outing with Kerri

 Minus 25C with a -34C windchill, fresh snow and sun, what a great Alberta day! Four weeks ago Kerri and I did a trip for wild horses (20121207) and we had a great day. Unfortunately Kerri lost all of her images (about 900) as the card in camera malfunctioned, so I was hoping to try and find her some of the same subjects. She was also hoping to find a wolf, so we were taking a slightly different "tour". We found our before sun up owl in a different environment, it was hunting from a set of Aspens, we watched it make three dives into the snow and return to the trees. Here is a terrible light condition wing shot, I would have loved to have full sun for this baby!

A little further along the trail we found this early morning Bull Moose wandering in an open "choppin". This would be the first of 7 on the day, a great count on any day.

Things were rolling right along when we found this nice Rocky Mountain Ram, he was deep in the shade so the shot is pretty bland, but too nice an animal to not make the post.

In just a little while we found our sun that had been promised for the day. We had run into moretraffic then we would have liked. we passed our Wolf sighting spot from NYD and headed into heavier woods. There was a small group of birds that "popped up" off the road so we stopped and took a look.

I was able to get closer to one of the Males, these are great colour birds for a beautiful winter day.

I believe that this is a Juvenile, with just a hint of orange. I haven't found any White winged's yet but these Red Crossbills certainly added to the day.

On our way to find some wild horses for Kerri we ran into a trio of Coyotes. While they wouldn't sit still for long, we did manage a couple of shots. Even though we were on the shady side of the dogs I think I was able to produce a a reasonable image.

We found 8 of these units on the day so there was almost always something in the viewfinder.
We found this small family unit of 4 wild horses. The deep snow is really making foraging difficult for them.

The Stallion was keeping a close eye on us letting the others feed.

We were able to find tow of the same three bulls that we had found four weeks ago. One of the big bulls had already lost his antlers. They were deep in the shade and a long way off. We took shots but nothing really worth posting here. We had a super day and as evening was closing in there were deer everywhere. We couldn't find any Elk or the NPO, but still considered it an excellent day.
Turbo

Kerri sent over this portrait of the Stallion to share:)

You can see more of Kerri's great images at : http://kerrimartinphotography.com/